Pest Alert - Japanese Beetles
Japanese Beetles have been horrible this year. Here are some options for controlling your beetle population and saving your flowers. Be prepared, there is no quick solution. Use a combination of the suggestions below to kill both the beetles and their larvae (white grubs) and you will help to eliminate these pests over time. If you have any questions about the products mentioned below give us a call or stop in and talk to the experts!
What is the best way to protect your plants from Japanese Beetles?
First of all, never use Japanese Beetle Traps. They are much more effective at attracting more Japanese Beetles into your garden than they are at controlling them.
To control the beetles themselves, there are many options. For ornamental plants (anything you aren’t going to eat), you can use Bonide Eight Spray. We carry this in a handy spray bottle and a bottle that can be hooked up to your hose for larger areas. For edibles, we have naturally-based pyrethrin sprays (derived from the chrysanthemum plant), including Bonide Japanese Beetle Killer. If you’d like to be completely organic, you can fill a bottle with some water, add liquid dish soap, and hand pick the critters off of your plants and throw them into the bottle. This can be extremely satisfying if you’ve been battling them for a while! For most sprays, you must spray the beetles themselves, because they work on contact. These sprays become inactive once dried. Keep in mind not to spray when the temperature is above 85 degrees, and never spray when the bees are active as these are toxic until dried to bees. Japanese Beetles are active most of the day, so you should have no trouble finding time to spray them!
Keep in mind they will lay eggs, and will do so in your lawn (or even small patch of grass). It is important to control them there as well, because their larvae (white grubs) can do a lot of damage to grass roots. Grub Beater, a granular product (active ingredient: Imidacloprid), is an easy way to take care of these pests. It is best applied during the growing season. It is a systemic insecticide that travels through the plant tissues. When the grubs eat the roots of a treated plant, they will die. Any product containing Imidacloprid should be used carefully- if the product is allowed to treat flowering plants, it can be harmful to pollinators such as bees.
Grub Beater spray is a naturally derived insecticide that can be hooked straight up to your hose and sprayed on your lawn (active ingredient: Azadirachtin). This is a derivative of neem oil and will also kill many other types of insects on contact.
For our organic options, we carry both Beneficial Nematodes and Milky Spore Disease. These are ideal to be used in combination. Beneficial nematodes will search for and kill white grubs in the lawn. Milky Spore Disease is a bacteria that specifically (and only) infects white grubs. Milky Spore can take a year to build up in your lawn to be most effective in controlling grubs. That is why in the first year nematodes can help to reduce the population while the Milky Spore is multiplying. An even better solution would be to get your neighbors involved in applying Milky Spore to their lawns as well. Studies have shown that the greater the area that is covered by Milky Spore, the better the overall grub control that area will have.
The best time of year to treat your lawn for grubs is August, when the grubs are most actively eating.
|
|
|
